The Rhinelanders have the carnival as their 5th season - and the Saxons (especially those in and around Dresden) have the cooking star hours. This year, the competition is tackling the well-formed figures of gourmets (m/f/d) for the 16th time, with more participating restaurants than ever: you could visit 50 addresses if you can manage it. After all, most of the 50 restaurants are offering three or four courses to show what they can do. Because that's what it's all about from February 6 to March 15, 2026: To make an impression and be rated as highly as possible - and this year for the 16th time.
That was the idea behind the Cooking Star Hours from the very beginning: to create special moments of enjoyment. But just as important was and is the second basic idea that Clemens Lutz, the inventor of Kochsternstunden, had back then: to give restaurateurs a little bit of guest happiness during the usually low-turnover period from the beginning of the year until Easter. It works quite well: last year, a total of 11,390 menus were sold in the 45 participating restaurants at the time - that's an average of 253 menus per restaurant. With 926 menus sold, Stresa in Dresden set the bar extremely high for many guests (happy ones, as the reviews showed). So it's no wonder that siblings Sebastian Böhme and Josefine Persing-Böhme are taking part in the competition for the first time this year with three restaurants: Stresa, Lössnitztalschänke and Hirschsalon (where the press conference for this year's Kochsternstunden took place).
